Grief Therapy in St. Louis
You can be functioning and still be grieving.
You went back to work. You’re answering texts. You’re getting groceries and making appointments and doing the things that need to be done. From the outside, you even look like you’re doing okay.
You might be. Some of the time.
And you’re also grieving.
Grief has a way of existing right alongside the rest of your life. You can laugh at something funny and miss someone overwhelmingly ten minutes later. You can have a genuinely good day and then be caught completely off guard by a song, a smell, an anniversary, or something you wish you could tell them.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with you when that happens. Grief is not something we neatly finish so we can get back to our regular lives.
It exists alongside our regular life and inside of it.
Sometimes we need somewhere to put it.
I provide grief therapy for adults in St. Louis and online throughout Missouri and Illinois who are navigating death, bereavement, anticipatory grief, caregiving, complicated relationships, and other significant losses.
Grief doesn’t always look the way we expect it to.
We tend to have a pretty narrow picture of what grief is supposed to look like. Someone dies. You’re devastated. Eventually, you start feeling better. And so on.
Real grief is usually so much messier than that.
You might feel deeply sad, angry, relieved, numb, guilty, anxious, distracted, or exhausted. You can desperately miss someone and also be angry with them. Grief is full of feelings that seem like they shouldn’t be allowed to exist at the same time.
They can.
You can feel relieved that someone you love is no longer suffering and then feel terrible for feeling relieved. This is one people often feel bad saying out loud, but it is real, common, and okay to feel. It doesn’t mean anything bad about you or that you loved someone less.
And grief isn’t reserved only for death loss.
Grief can also come with:
• Divorce or the end of a relationship
• Estrangement
• A serious diagnosis
• Caring for someone whose health is declining
• The loss of a friendship
• A major life transition
• The loss of the life or future you expected
Sometimes we are grieving a person.
Sometimes we are grieving the life we had with someone.
And sometimes we are grieving the future we thought we were going to have.
Not every loss looks the same. It never does.
Sometimes being the one who handles everything makes grief even harder.
When something difficult happens, some of us know exactly what to do. We handle the logistics. Check on everyone else. Make the phone calls. Figure out what the kids need. Go back to work. Keep things moving because things still have to get done.
There is no other option, okay?
There can even be something comforting about having things to do. Especially if you’re already the person everyone counts on.
But being able to function through a loss doesn’t mean you aren’t affected by it. And if you’re usually the person other people rely on, you may not have many places where you get to be the person who doesn’t have it together.
Therapy can be one of those places.
You don’t have to take care of me while we are together. You don’t have to make your grief easier for me to hear. You don’t have to reassure me that you’re okay.
And you don’t have to worry about how I will feel or respond when you say the hard parts of grief out loud.
I can handle those moments with you.
How do I carry this and still have a life?
This is one of the questions at the center of grief therapy for me.
I’m not interested in helping you “move on.” I’m interested in helping you figure out how this loss becomes part of your life without becoming the only part of your life.
That’s what I mean when I talk about integrating grief. The loss remains part of your life without having to become your entire life.
Grief research actually gives us a helpful way to think about this.
Allow me to nerd out for a moment.
Researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut developed what’s called the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement. Rather than treating grief as a series of stages you move through, their model describes grieving as moving back and forth between two different kinds of coping: loss-oriented and restoration-oriented.
LOSS-ORIENTED
Sometimes we turn toward grief.
You cry. Talk about the person. Tell stories. Look at pictures. Miss them. Get angry. Think about what happened. Remember what was good and what was complicated.
Sometimes you need to let yourself actually feel the loss.
RESTORATION-ORIENTED
And sometimes you turn toward life.
You go to work. Take your kid to soccer. Learn how to do something the other person always handled. Spend time with friends. Start a hobby. Take a trip. Laugh. Rest.
You need a break from grief.
And you might need permission to take the break. Most of us do.
Grief does not require constant attention.
You are allowed to watch terrible television. Go out to dinner. Take a vacation. Get really invested in a hobby you previously couldn’t have cared less about. Have an entire afternoon when you don’t think about what happened.
A break from grief is not a betrayal of the person you lost. And having a hard grief day after several good ones does not mean you are moving backward.
Grieving often means moving between the loss and the life that continues around it.
The goal isn’t to choose grief or living. We’re making room for both.
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.
So what does grief therapy actually help with?
Grief therapy isn’t about teaching you the “right” way to grieve.
And no, I’m not going to make you complete all five stages of grief like we’re collecting badges.
The stages were never meant to be a checklist or a required sequence, and not everyone experiences all of them. But somehow, every griever seems to know about them.
Grief is not prescriptive.
Therapy can help you:
• Make space for the loss instead of always having to function around it
• Talk about complicated relationships and things left unsaid
• Work through guilt, anger, resentment, relief, or conflicting feelings
• Learn how to tolerate grief when it shows up without becoming afraid of it
• Notice when staying busy is helping and when it has become the only way you know how not to feel
• Adjust to new responsibilities, relationships, roles, and changes in identity
• Make room for rest, connection, hobbies, pleasure, and a life outside of grief
• Figure out how to keep living without feeling like you are leaving someone behind
We won’t erase the loss.
But we will help you make room for your grief without requiring it to take up every room in your life.
Anticipatory grief counts, too.
Sometimes grief begins before someone dies.
If someone you love has a serious, progressive, or terminal illness, you may already be grieving changes in your relationship, their abilities, the future you expected to have together, and what you know may be coming.
At the same time, there are appointments, decisions, work, family, and caregiving responsibilities that don’t stop because you are emotionally exhausted.
You can desperately want more time with someone and also be exhausted by caregiving.
Both can be true.
There is a scarcity of time and energy in this part of grief that can be especially painful. When you know your time with someone may be limited, even deciding how to spend that time can start to feel loaded.
Therapy gives you somewhere to talk honestly about that without having to make it sound better or worse than it is.
Grieving while parenting is its
own kind of hard.
Sometimes you’re trying to understand your own grief while also helping your child understand theirs.
Children are particularly good at asking a devastating existential question and then immediately wanting a snack.
They may seem completely fine and bring the loss up three weeks later. If they’re younger, they may talk about it again. And again. And again.
It can feel a little like grief Groundhog Day when you’re trying to get through your own day and your child needs to process the same thing out loud for the fifteenth time.
That is normal.
And whatever feelings you have about it are probably more normal than you think, too.
Children process grief differently as they grow, and their understanding of death changes with their development. They may revisit the same loss in new ways as they get older.
Before working primarily with adults, I spent years working with children, adolescents, and families. I’ve also experienced some of this parenting-through-grief reality myself.
We can talk about what is developmentally appropriate, how to answer difficult questions honestly, and what reactions you might expect.
But our work is still about you.
You do not have to become your family’s grief counselor just because you are the parent.
You don’t have to wait until it becomes unbearable.
Maybe the loss happened last month. Maybe it happened ten years ago.
Maybe another loss, an anniversary, becoming a parent, or some other change in your life has brought it back in a way you didn’t expect.
There is no expiration date on grief. And therapy isn’t reserved for people who can no longer function.
You can be working. Parenting. Laughing. Making plans. Having good days.
And still need somewhere to let it all out.
Grief Counseling in Missouri and Illinois
I provide individual grief therapy for adults experiencing death and bereavement, anticipatory grief, caregiving, complicated relationships, relationship loss, estrangement, and major life transitions.
My approach isn’t about deciding what your grief should look like by now. We can make room for the loss itself while also helping you navigate the relationships, responsibilities, identity changes, and ordinary life that continue around it.
I offer online grief therapy for clients throughout Missouri and Illinois.
If you’re functioning on the outside but know you need somewhere for your grief to go, we can talk.